Economic Growth, Climate Change and the G20: A View from Civil Society
A summary of the proceedings from the APCSE conference on Economic Growth, Climate Change and the G20 is now available on Medium.com
A summary of the proceedings from the APCSE conference on Economic Growth, Climate Change and the G20 is now available on Medium.com
By Jeremy Williams, Griffith University
News emerging from Washington last week suggests climate change may amount to more than an FAQ in the appendices of this November’s G20 leaders’ summit agenda. President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, Caroline Atkinson, has made the point that, as the G20 economies generate 80% of the world’s carbon emissions, the group should give a political push to “specific steps” to address climate change.
The Climate Commission was established, among other things, to provide Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change. Last week the Commission released its latest report, Off the Charts: Extreme Australian Summer Heat; authored in response to questions from citizens and media seeking to understand the link between climate change and the intense heat wave experienced in recent weeks.
Understanding this link is important because having good knowledge of climate change risks enables us to take appropriate action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to put measures in place to address the rising incidence of more extreme weather events.
Drawing on CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology research, the report points out that Australia’s average temperature has risen by 0.9°C since 1910. On the face of it, this may not seem like a huge increase, but according to the Climate Commission it has contributed to a doubling of the number of record hot days across Australia since 1960.
The key point here is that we are likely to see many more record hot days in Australia if global warming continues unabated. The time has come, it seems, when we must act on what the climate scientists have been telling us for a long time now.
This time last year NASA announced that, globally, the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred in the last 15 years. In November, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the US Department of Commerce told us that the 10 warmest Novembers have occurred in the past 12 years, and that November 2012 was the 36th consecutive November and 333rd consecutive month with global temperature higher than the 20th century average.
The likes of NASA and NOAA are respected scientific bodies, and their analyses need to be taken seriously. Indeed, very few academics within the climate science community would likely disagree. A number of surveys in recent years show almost total unanimity in their views about climate change, the most recent of which was conducted by James L. Powell, the Executive Director of the National Physical Science Consortium, and member of the National Science Board under both the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations.
Powell reviewed 13,950 peer-reviewed papers published between January 1991 and early November 2012, and only 24 (0.17%) clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.
There is also a growing consensus among the general population as research published in August last year through the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCAF) demonstrates. The two-year project, led by Griffith University academic Joseph Reser, involved nearly 7500 Australians and 1800 Britons and found 90 per cent of Australian and 89 per cent of British respondents accepted human causal impact on climate change.
Australian respondents, the report noted, were beginning to adapt to climate change by modifying their thinking, feelings and behaviours; some 71 per cent declaring an increasing concern about climate change over the two year period prior to the surveys, citing increased awareness, media coverage, perceived lack of government action, and increasing frequency of natural disasters and extreme weather events.
If there has been some reassessment of climate change risk among the general public, it is highly likely that stock market investors will be doing the same. HSBC Global Research published a report last week, Climate Inflation Hits Australia, that recommends investors push companies harder for disclosure on the financial materiality of risks associated with weather disruption from both an operational and supply chain perspective.
To deliver emission reductions in line with a carbon budget of less than a 2°C warming, says HSBC, governments must step up in their policy ambition for emission reduction. The catalyst for such policy momentum, says the bank, will be ‘increased disruption caused by extreme weather, combined with a greater focus from climate scientists on attributing short-term weather extremes to longer-term temperature gains’.
A useful first step might be for politicians of all persuasions to accept the science. Only then can a sensible policy debate can take place. Sound policies will deliver outcomes that send clear signals to the marketplace about how resources can be allocated to minimise the risks associated with climate change.
The sooner there is a political consensus to match the scientific consensus, the easier it will be all of us to adapt to the new reality of a warmer world.
(This article was published in the Courier-Mail under the title, Consensus on science will take the heat out of debate, on 21 January.)
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People in 181 countries are coming together today to take part in arguably the most widespread day of environmental action in history. An estimated 5200 events are scheduled to take place around the world, to call for strong action and decisive leadership on the climate crisis. The main objective is to draw attention to the science of climate change and what constitutes an acceptable level of CO2 in the atmosphere. The figure is 350 parts per million (ppm); hence the formation of 350.org. Right now, it is around 389 ppm. Meanwhile our politicians are saying that 450 is politically realistic. If you agree with Clive Hamilton, then 450 is simply not acceptable at all. This speech, entitled: Is It Too Late to Prevent Catastrophic Climate Change? was delivered in Sydney at a meeting of the Royal Society of the Arts last Wednesday, and the message is very depressing.
Image source: usyd.edu.au
After publicly criticising Tim Flannery a couple of years ago for playing into the Howard goverment’s hands with his “advocacy of do-nothing green consumerism” and his pro-nuclear stance, Clive Hamilton has really upped the ante today with an article in Crikey entitled: Flip-flop Flannery is a climate change opportunist. A “talented science populariser can be a policy flake” says Hamilton, as he casts aspersions on the coherence of Flannery’s views. While it is probably true that Flannery has been cosying up to the those on the right of Australian politics a little more than is conscionable given their record on climate change and the environment more generally, flicking through my copy of The Weather Makers, I don’t think he can be accused of not arguing for government intervention. Having said this, if Hamilton’s broadside does anything, it should at least cause Flannery to come out and state his position more clearly.
Image source: recessionhistory.info
The biggest problem with governments is that they are run by politicians whose first concern is the electoral cycle. The second biggest problem is that these politicians tend to have advisors with economics degrees from top universities where the economic history courses have limited appeal alongside the finance-oriented courses that are viewed as ‘hard science’. It is for this reason that history repeats itself as governments do not learn from previous mistakes. The fact that Paul Krugman feels compelled to write an article in the IHT today defending the case for a large fiscal deficit is testimony to this, as is the almost apologetic way the Rudd government in Australia has mentioned the ‘d’ word in recent days.
Image source: neweconomics.org
I am a little perturbed by the reactionary position taken by some on the right of the political spectrum, that the economic downturn is reason enough to shelve plans for ecological tax reform (e.g. the Liberal Party in Australia). On the contrary, the economic crisis is an opportunity to do something to engineer radical change, hence the appeal of what some people are referring to as the Green New Deal. The New Economics Foundation in the UK is one group that is doing some interesting work in this area.
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Former Australian PM, Paul Keating, was in fine form last night on ABC’s 7.30 Report. Love him or hate him, he was (and still is) a visionary and a dying breed in the age of the 10-second sound byte media driven political scene that dominates today. The main theme of the interview was national savings and, more specifically, retirement income. The Keating Government set in place a system that would have ensured Australian baby-boomers had enough set aside for their old age (phased-in compulsory employer super contributions of 15%). The Howard-Costello administration abandoned this (at 9%) when it took office in 1996 and the greying population missed out on 2003-07 equities boom that would have given them sizeable nest eggs by now. What I miss most about Keating, though, are his insults. Peter Costello he referred to as a “nong” and a “slow-moving dope” and said that “in policy terms he’s a mouse”. ‘Onya Paul.
Image source: smh.com.au
After eleven and a half years of a Coalition government that has ignored critical issues like climate change, the plight of indigenous Australians, the popular support for a republic, and mass opposition to the Iraq war, there is now cause for optimism. The defeat of John Howard by Maxine McKew in his own electorate of Bennelong (after being the sitting member for 33 years) will be the icing on the cake.
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), having won some respect under the new leadership of Kevin Rudd in recent weeks sank back to new lows, in my opinion, with its recent Conference resolution to allow new uranium mines. This is a huge mistake on the part of the ALP because by joining the Government in favouring nuclear power as a solution to reducing reliance on fossil fuels it means that, yet again, it has forgone an opportunity to differentiate itself from the ruling party. Listening to Tim Flannery on ABC radio this week, the ALP would do well to take advice from him. Flannery, author of best-seller, The Weather Makers, makes the point that given the widely acknowledged problems with nuclear power (e.g. dealing with waste, the time and cost involved in constructing nuclear power plants, and the dangers associated with plants becoming targets for terrorist attacks) it makes an inordinate amount of sense to explore this option only as a last resort. Far better, suggests Flannery, to go as far as you can to reduce emissions by increasing the efficiency of energy use and exploring clean and safe renewable energy options. If future demand for energy can be met through these means, the taxpayer can save a whole lot of money, the environment will experience less damage, and the community will be a safer place to live in. The lack of thought by the major political parties regarding climate change is also exemplified by Flannery’s observation that they have yet to identify what increase in temperature they consider to be unacceptably high, and what policies they plan to put in place to ensure this scenario does not eventuate.
Tim Flannery, by the way, is Australian of the Year. I hope he is Australian of the Year next year and the year after too.
